A pressure on my shoulder made me jump. I was still edgy from wrestling with Kevin, but when I turned, it was Jonathan. He had a scratch on his right cheek.
“He’s left-handed,” I said, pointing at the scratch on his cheek. “You said you wouldn’t get physical.”
“What are you…?” He touched his face and came back with blood. “Thorn bush. It’s dark over there.” He held out my bag. “I parked your car around the corner. I’ll have Lil drop it to you tomorrow.”
“Why can’t I just take it?”
“Because I’m driving you home.”
“No, Jonathan—”
“I want to talk to you.”
He looked as though he had to tell me something, and since he’d just gotten back from Kevin’s, I was pretty sure I needed to hear it. I said goodbye to everyone with Los Angeles hugs, promising calls and get togethers that I wanted from the bottom of my heart, but I would never make happen.
He walked me down the block, saying nothing until we got to the Jag. He opened the passenger door for me. I leaned on the car, not ready to commit to letting him drive me home.
“Get in.”
I crossed my arms. “What happened at the studio?”
“I saw the piece.”
“And?”
“You know it’s phenomenal. You don’t need me to tell you that. Now get in.”
“I don’t need to be pushed around twice in one night.”
He leaned on the car, one hand on each side of me. “I need to get off this street with its four hundred drunk kids going back and forth from a party.” He wasn’t touching me. Not even our clothes were touching, but I felt him in a push of desire. I wanted him. My lips, my cunt, even my throbbing face wanted him. When he spoke again, his voice went from his mouth to my heart, lighting it on fire. “I need to speak to you privately.”
“I don’t want to speak. I want to go home and look in a mirror.”
“You bruise easily. Okay? Now get in the car.”
My hand went to my face. The skin was numb, with pain underneath it. “It must be awful.”
He took my hand and kissed my cheek. It hurt and gave me incredible pleasure at the same time. When he moved his lips from my cheek to my neck, the hurt disappeared and the pleasure increased. “It’s not,” he whispered.
“Is this a ploy to get me in the car?”
He looked in my eyes, then he kissed my lips, parting them with his tongue. He paused only to say, “Yes.”
I gave in to him, his arms resting on either side of my head and closing out the rest of the world. Only in that kiss did I realize how bad the last weeks had been, how much I’d missed him. Not just his physical attention, but his words and gestures, his protection and devotion.
He dragged his lips along my jawline and said, “What do you want, Monica?”
“I want you.”
“You want me what?”
“To take me to bed.”
“I’m not a toy.” He said it while kissing my ear and touching my throat, his erection firm on my belly. He used his most tender voice. “You can’t throw me away, then reel me back whenever you feel like f**king.”
“Then stop touching me whenever I throw in a line.”
He pulled away slowly. “You’re right.” His eyes scanned mine, and his expression changed, as if he’d realized something. I didn’t know if I liked it.
A part of me wanted to reel him back in. It was the part of me that loved him in the first place, naturally. That part wanted to rub against him. That part had watched him walk across the street like a stranger, with all the heated possibilities that implied.
But my brain said “no.” My mind was the repository of memory, and in that repository sat Eddie Milpas’s suggestion that I become Bondage Girl for the masses, the symbol of their unspoken, unwanted desires. I could sing like a frog, and it wouldn’t matter as long as I wore a rich man’s collar.
“Let’s talk in the car,” I said, “but I’m taking myself home.”
He paused, and I wanted to fall into his eyes, so close, so piercing. I slipped from under him and into the car.
He shut my door and walked around the front. I was so disappointed in myself. I had left him for good reason. I left him for the same reasons I left Kevin: my life, my career, my work. So how did I end up in the front seat of his car, about to talk about things I didn’t want to talk about? How would I handle being in close quarters with him when all he had to do was touch me and I’d fall to pieces? I was weak, and I knew it. That was why I’d left Kevin so sharply. That was why I was celibate for so long. If being in control of my pu**y wasn’t an option, at least I could control who I saw and under what circumstances.
As weak as Kevin had made me, and as much as that weakness had made me run from him, it was nothing compared to what Jonathan did to me.
He got in the driver’s side, and I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see him or the way the light hit his cheekbones or the taut skin of his jaw. If I could just close off my nose and ears, I’d get out of the car intact.
“Monica,” he said, “are you all right?”
“It’s been a long night.”
“You can’t go with him.”
“Fuck you, it’s my career.”
“The masochism’s not supposed to leave the bedroom.”
“Go to hell.” I went for the door handle. He reached across me and grabbed my wrist.
“You’re not hearing me. You don’t belong near him. It burns a hole in me.”
I was entitled to see whomever I wanted for whatever reason I wanted. Jonathan and I were broken up. But I felt guilty for leaving him, and my guilt spoke. “Who was she? In DC? You going to tell me you don’t have someone to f**k in every port of call? Tell me about her, and we’ll call it even.”
He leaned back, letting my wrist go. “Are you serious?”
I shouldn’t have asked, because his look wasn’t one of denial, but “How dare you ask?” The way he said it, I was sure he’d done some f**king in the past two weeks and it immobilized my heart. When I was a kid, a hole the size of a fist opened up in the middle of our street. Three inches of asphalt dropped into a deep nothingness. It got bigger and bigger, falling into itself until Teddy Ramirez’s Toyota got stuck.
My chest had that sinkhole in it. It just fell in on itself, creating a bigger opening into nothingness and sucking the breath out of me. No. That was not good. That was the very definition of awful. I shifted and went for the door. He reached across me again and blocked the handle. “You can’t run away every time something gets difficult.”